The Evolution of Perl Monks: Chapter 714

Primary Points

That personality conflicts are an inescapable element of a
community, and

That a community needs rules before it is justified in punishing
its unpopular or seditious elements, and

That princepawn's departure is a failure on the part of the
Perl Monks community, not on the part of princepawn

Point One: Where are you, Solomon?

Communities are constructed from the complex relationships
of people with, in the case of Perl Monks, shared interests.
A community of one person is unlikely to have "politics", a
word with dirty connotations. A community with two or more
people experiences politics in short order. The holier-than-thou
often openly disdain politicking. But community politics are,
at the basic level, nothing more than the resolution of
conflicts between individuals.

It is most often the case that individuals will
aggregate into factions weighing in on either side of an issue.
This creates the advantage of numbers -- in an era or place
without formalized government, a larger faction will have more
success in whacking other factions upside the head with sticks.
Under a formalized government, a large and powerful faction
can wield their sticks against a dictator (a revolution) or a ruling faction (a different
kind of revolution).

The second order effect is that it is unlikely
that all members of a faction will agree wholly on anything,
including whatever issue is at hand (providing they even
remember the issue, what with all the smacking and bonking
people about the head). A faction is a community within a
community, and differs somewhat in that the members of a
faction usually agree to present a united front during the conflict over a particular
issue. Factions tend to be unsustainable unless
there is a mechanism in place such that members are willing
to give up several degrees of freedom over the long term.

Perl Monks is more of a community than a faction itself, but
has suffered from personal conflicts and conflicts between
loosely knit groups over a number of issues. The latest source
of friction has been between princepawn and a number of
monks acting out their individual consciences. It would be
entirely acceptable to dismiss princepawn as chaotic element
who refuses to conform to what is commonly accepted as
proper conduct. It is more appropriate though to examine
the existing practices, the roles of different members of
the community, and the aforementioned codes of conduct.

Question 1: Is Perl Monks a strong
community in its own right, a faction of the Perl community at large,
or both?Points to consider:

Perl Monks provides an alternative resource to places like #perl,
with a higher level of tolerance for ignorant questions (or so the story goes).

Perl Monks uses the metaphor of a monastery as a model for
behavior, etiquette, preservation of knowledge. Monasteries are
often hierarchical organizations with strict rules for membership
and protocol enforcement mechanisms.

The Perl community has no qualifications
for membership, no particular goals (just the shared interest of using
and bettering perl), and no overarching metaphor or behavioral protocol enforcement.

Perl Monks the group does not have a great deal of influence over
the development of Perl the language (or does it?), which is the only
power in the Perl community worth having (or is it?).

Question 2: Does Perl Monks have its own internal factions of people
easily swayed by emotion or awe or demagoguery, or is
every member an individual who forms fluid alliances based
on his/her ethical stances and ability to reason?Points to consider: An Innocent Post degenerates

The codes of conduct and community roles have been shaped so far with a
powerful concept, the concept of metaphor. But the Perl Monks
community cannot grow and evolve forever fueled only by the monastery metaphor.

The first problem with using a metaphor as a means of framing a community is that
it is difficult to find a really effective metaphor that does not break down on
close examination. The second is the danger that the line between
metaphor and reality will start to blur in the minds of community members. Examples
of both these points are easy to find.

In the case of the first point, for instance, the hierarchical organization
of a Christian monastery follows naturally from the proposition one, that its residents are
all in service of God's will, and proposition two, that God is in the
monastery and everywhere else as well.
Thus, the need for at least two levels of authority (God and
!God) in the monastery makes sense. But Perl is not God, Larry is not God,
and vroom is not God (neither of the latter ever having made the claim).
One can argue that we must have many levels
of monks at PM, instead of equality for all, but we do not find God when
we reduce the argument here.

In the second case, one doesn't need to read very many posts to realize that a
few members have lost track of the fact that Perl Monks is not actually
a monastery*.
All of the preconceptions that one has about monasteries are not necessarily correct
or applicable. They are useful for conveying a great deal of community
philosophy in a single word to a new user. The word is pregnant with thousands of years
of history and precedent, and acts as a marvelous clue-stick for supplicants and
applicants alike. The metaphor should be retained because of its power. The power
of connotation though is such that the rules of actual monasteries are
taken to be the case in Perl Monks. (For example, exhibiting humility before God because God is
greater than the individual does not translate to exhibiting humility before Perl.)
Unlike physical monasteries, Perl Monks does not yet have formalized protocols with an
accompanying set of enforcement mechanisms.

This brings us to the question of Perl Monks rules and enforcements thereof. Nowhere
is it written that monks must be polite, have a sense of humor, and like Perl. There
are implicit mores and written "suggestions", and sure it would be silly for someone
who didn't like Perl to want to be a Perl Monk, but the fact
remains that there is no formalized code of conduct.

Instead, we have the accompanying half in place: an enforcement mechanism (voting) for monks to use,
and without rules, to abuse with impunity. Rules must have teeth and teeth must have rules.
Certainly voting was not originally envisioned as a
mechanism to punish the unpopular. But it is tremendously naive to think that no one
would ever be influenced to vote based on the writer of the post rather than the content.
Perl Monks has several thousand enforcers running around with the ability to enforce
completely arbitrary rules at the whim of their individual motivations.
Even the most thoughtful person rarely takes the time to face their own motivations
in enforcing rules, such as "Am I following my principles?" or "Have I ever questioned my own
principles to make sure they weren't blindly inherited?".

Expand these questions about
individual motivations to a vast web of community motivations and you will encounter
weaknesses. One weakness is that if there are no formalized
rules and we rely on the good judgment of the average monk, there is room then for
the demagogue who can influence monks (through words, prowess, or other means)
to subjugate their internal sense of principle. S/he can then control their
collective enforcement power to either shape their vision of the rules, or merely
punish threats as they arise in a chaotic system. A community may, as a whole,
prefer to risk this possibility rather than implement written rules.

If there are formalized rules, an altogether different but common system
failure occurs: the failure of most communities to recognize that the seditious and
unpopular element that merely questions the existing rules is not, in fact, dangerous.
These are the people who prevent the fossilization and institutionalization
of codes that over time lose meaning or relevance to a community.

Question 3: Would you say that Perl Monks
actually is a monastery?Point to consider: Languages and words evolve to fit their times...

Question 4: Would retaining voting on nodes but getting rid of XP negate the
opportunity for the power-hungry to make up the rules by putting
together factions of votes?Points to consider:

XP whoring would be harder

Group-shunning would have to be done verbally, not with mass downvoting

People might stop voting completely if there is no "reward"

Question 5: How did the practice of banning white shoes after Labor day finally go
out of practice, and why did it exist in the first place?People to consult: a certain master of trivia

Point Three: What Do You Call a Group of Camels?

Princepawn is unpopular. That is not really up for debate. Personality perhaps
comes into play, but also the content of his posts and the danger that is perceived in them.
He has questioned
informal community practices (mass downvoting), arbitrary actions by people with
power (refusing a request for a picture in the monk rotation), and the very center
of the community's existence: Perl. As an outsider and a person who will say out
loud what others do not, his actions are not just valuable but are an
ongoing necessity.

Without a gadfly type of element who forces the community
to defend its reasoning, the reasons may themselves be forgotten, though the rules
go on. A gadfly has a difficult path, because s/he must be part of and apart
from a community. It is not for the author of this post to say that princepawn
is the "right" person to take on this role, or that any one person should do so.
But the role itself is valuable, and
though princepawn's personality may grate, many of his questions deserve abundant
respect.

Though it may be the decision of the community to do otherwise, it is
the opinion of the author that a formal set of rules is necessary. Why?
the number of new users registering every day leads to a conclusion based on
practicality -- that the popularity of the site and the need for its services
will overwhelm a delicate unwritten system based on deep personal respect, graciousness,
humility, and learning. One doesn't need to look far
to see a formerly close-knit community of the smart and computer-literate
overwhelmed by popularity.
The most resilient community will be the one that embraces the seditious
voice and allows it to prune away the dead or useless bits. Whether it is just
one lone voice or a occasional note in every monk's voice does not matter.
Perl Monks is not any different from any other community -- its denizens will herd
instinctively to protect the interests of the community. The question that matters is
not whether it is resilient enough to withstand attacks on Perl, but whether it
is resilient enough to understand its own best interests, to transform itself as
necessary, and to thrive as a result.

Question 6: Is Slashdot a grand failure or a notable success as
an online community of self-described nerds?

Question 7: Would you question everything? Or do you
believe that some questions go too far and it should be incorporated into
the rules that certain things should be left unsaid?Consider the following:

Is it acceptable to be harsh with new users? Is it acceptable to be harsh
with people who are harsh? It is acceptable to set any rules at all?

Should a democratic society such as the United States do away with the
anonymous vote completely? Should Perl Monks?

Do merlyn, gnat, Dominus etc. deserve to be worshipped as heroes? Does
it damage the community at large to have Saints with power and influence,
or does it give new users a valuable goal to strive for?

Will the use of Perl die out in the near future as it becomes bogged down
with bureaucracy at the top levels? Should Perl die out if there is an
as-yet-unspecified language that is more
intuitive, more efficient, and faster to write in? Does that language already exist?